Coinbase Ventures announced their list of preferred investment sectors for 2026.

In my opinion, this is actually a prediction of future industry hotspots by top VCs.

For us retail investors, the smartest approach is: to see what top institutions are backing and then follow suit.

This report likely holds the key to next year's wealth.

I have distilled the core content, and I hope everyone can grasp early trends after reading it.

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Section One: RWA Perpetual: The Perpetualization of Everything

The enthusiasm for RWA remains high, but Coinbase's viewpoint is interesting:

The real breakthrough will not come from "asset on-chain," but from RWA perpetual contracts.

▰ No need to custody real assets

▰ Can market anything

▰ Meets traders' demand for macro exposure

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Section Two: Specialized Trading Structures & Prediction Market Trading Terminals

1. Innovative market-making mechanisms

▰ Solve the issue of AMM LP being eaten by toxic flow

▰ Solana's Prop-AMM is the direction they have highlighted as most interesting

2. Specialized trading terminals for prediction markets

Prediction markets are one of the few truly consumer-grade explosive crypto applications, but liquidity is severely fragmented.

The future Coinbase envisions is:

A unified terminal aggregating all prediction markets.

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Section Three: Next-Generation DeFi

1. Composability of Perpetuals

Perpetual exchanges will combine with lending and yield structures to enhance capital efficiency.

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2. Unsecured credit lending

▰ On-chain identity + off-chain data

▰ Benchmarking against the $1.3T revolving credit market in the USA

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3. On-chain privacy

Privacy is an essential infrastructure for Web3 to go mainstream.

▰ A necessity for institutions & advanced users

▰ ZKP, FHE, MPC, TEE flourishing in all directions

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Section Four: AI × Crypto

1. Data networks for robot training

▰ Physical interaction data is extremely scarce

▰ DePIN models may become the data engine for the robotics industry

2. Proof of Humanity

As AI content proliferates, human authenticity will become an internet infrastructure.

3. AI-assisted on-chain development

Smart contract development will usher in the "Copilot moment."

▰ Auto-generation, auto-auditing, auto-monitoring

▰ Non-technical founders can also launch businesses in hours